3 changes: Dud who's "out of his depth" axed, "terrific" gem starts: NUFC predicted XI - opinion

Newcastle United return to action today as they travel away to face Manchester City at The Etihad in the Premier League.

The Magpies have won four of their last five games in the division and are in with a shot of finishing the season in the top half of the table.

Eddie Howe’s men lost their last outing, however, as they were beaten 1-0 by Liverpool at St. James’ Park. Naby Keita scored the only goal of the game as he found the back of the net shortly after Fabian Schar was caught by a challenge from James Milner.

How many changes will Howe make to the team from that loss? Here is our predicted XI…

Martin Dubravka; Javier Manquillo, Jamaal Lascelles, Dan Burn, Matt Targett; Joelinton, Bruno Guimaraes, Jonjo Shelvey; Miguel Almiron, Chris Wood, Allan Saint-Maximin.

We are predicting that he will make three alterations to the side, with Manquillo, Lascelles and Wood all coming into the XI.

Starting off at centre-back, Schar may miss out after the head coach confirmed on Friday that he had not trained during the week. Howe said: “We haven’t seen him this week. We hope he’ll be back to be available but he’s not trained yet. He got a knock on the top of his foot so he went for a scan after the Liverpool game because it was swollen. Fortunately, there was no fracture.”

Lascelles should come in for him at the heart of the defence. The Magpies skipper came on for him against Liverpool and started in his place against Norwich as he helped the team to a 3-0 win – winning 100% of his ground duels and making six clearances in the process – and this shows that he is a reliable option for the boss to call upon.

At right-back, Javier Manquillo, who Steve Bruce once described as “terrific”, may come in for Emil Krafth to round out the